Vicious accelerating walkers

Abstract

A vicious walker system consists of N random walkers on a line with any two walkers annihilating each other upon meeting. We study a system of N vicious accelerating walkers with the velocity undergoing Gaussian fluctuations, as opposed to the position. We numerically compute the survival probability exponent, {\alpha}, for this system, which characterizes the probability for any two walkers not to meet. For example, for N = 3, {\alpha} = 0.71 \pm 0.01. Based on our numerical data, we conjecture that 1/8N(N - 1) is an upper bound on {\alpha}. We also numerically study N vicious Levy flights and find, for instance, for N = 3 and a Levy index {\mu} = 1 that {\alpha} = 1.31 \pm 0.03. Vicious accelerating walkers relate to no-crossing configurations of semiflexible polymer brushes and may prove relevant for a non-Markovian extension of Dyson's Brownian motion model.